Balanced: Wow! What a stunning image - absolutely love the simple, centred composition....works very well as mono.
Crushed: Another beautifully simple composition, which again lends itself extremely well to mono. Great textures in the surface and the ice.
Thanks, Gareth, you are very kind. They were a bit rushed and there are problems with them but it gives me a starting point to have another go
Balanced - Works nicely Andrea, with just enough reflection showing on the surface to prevent the image being 'floaty'. Lovely exposure and plenty of detail
Crushed - As you say, a great contrast between the blacks and whites in the image. Good use of diagonals to lead you across the image from the top right to the focal point bottom left.
Thanks, Tim, I got more or less what I was aiming for with both of these, but I can see technical problems with them now that weren't apparent at the time
Crushed goes very well in b&w Andrea, very nicely taken.
Thanks, Dave
A clean and sharp Balance shot with good lighting too. As for the background, have you consider using one large sheet of paper to give that seamless continuous fore and background.
A simple well lit shot but I would like the ice are smaller pieces.
Thanks for the detailed feedback, Stan. I couldn't see the issues with the background at the time, which means I need to spend some time with my screen or optician, or both

I'm going to try using paper as I agree that would have looked much neater. I agree about the ice, too - I took a few different ones and this was my favourite because of the details in the large blocks at the front, but I should have used one of the images with smaller pieces.
Andrea.
Two very good images in Balance and Crushed. Both work very well in B&W with plenty on tones and detail showing.
Pete
Thank you, Pete - I did enjoy the chance to work with B&W again
The egg works quite well although I agree the BG needs a little work but I think the lighting is fine
The ice I'm not really feeling its needs more DoF maybe some focus stacking
Thanks for the feedback, Allan. As I said to Stan above, I didn't see the issues with the background at the time so more work is needed there, and I picked the wrong ice image as I did take some with smaller pieces but got attracted to the details in the foreground in this one. It's also the one with the narrowest DOF as I liked the effect, but possibly not the right choice for this theme

Thank you again, your comments are helpful.